Foul Play
by TomFoolery
Summary: After being hit by a car, Draco is taken to a Muggle hospital and is classified as insane. Desperate to clear his name, he flees, taking Hermione hostage and setting off a series of events that will change them both forever.


**Hermione's Bad Day**

There was a car, there were several cars, coming to screeching stops and echoes of screaming tires, smashing glass and twisting metal. The disturbing noises continued on and were joined by shouts and screams by bystanders to the mayhem. The faces were unrecognizable. And as quickly as it all began, it was over. She walked through the wreckage of the cars, past a seemingly familiar man moaning from a gushing head wound and to a blonde boy whimpering in pain under the debris. As she cradled his head in her hands, he turned to look at her, only he had no face…

It was a humid morning with a slight wind brushing through the open window. She awoke before being nearly smothered by her hair, which had expanded to about twice its normal size. She was shaking from the dream she had just had. It had seemed so real. Sweeping the defiant curls out of her face, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached her toes out for the floor only to fall considerably further than she had anticipated. As she hit the wooden flooring it hit her that she had been sleeping in the top of Ginny's bunk bed.

"You ok?" Ginny murmured through her pillow, still mostly asleep.

It hurt.

"No," she moaned, crawling to her feet, rubbing the sore wrists that had caught her fall.

"What time is it?" Ginny muttered sleepily.

Hermione glanced at her watch, noticing a giant crack through the face. She smirked.

"Five forty-five."

"You're mad," Ginny yelped, rolling over and grabbing the sheet over her head.

She limped across the floor in the dark and down the hallway into the bathroom. She turned on the pale overhead mirror lights and shut the door quietly. There was no reason to wake up everyone else in the house. She rubbed her eyes and pulled the medicine cabinet door shut, revealing her reflection in the mirror. She yawned and put both hands on the sink, leaning forward to look at herself.

She saw it instantly. An obnoxious, purplish-red blemish situated most inconveniently on the tip of her nose. She felt it gently with her finger: it was painful to the touch. This day certainly wasn't going to go well.

To be honest, the week so far hadn't been great. She still hadn't received any post from her parents. It had been several weeks since they had left for France and they should have returned three days ago. There had been no response to the letters she had sent, neither by owl post nor by the regular Muggle method, and she was beginning to get worried. Mr. Weasley had said that if there was no word from them by the end of the evening, a member of the Order would visit her house and make sure everything was ok.

She pulled her shirt off over her head and got ready to have a bath. Just as she was pulling off her knickers, she tripped, crashing headfirst into the tiled wall. She growled in frustration, furiously rubbing the growing lump on her head. She paused for a few moments, letting the pain subside and then slumped back against the wall in annoyance. Adding fuel to the fire, one of Mrs. Weasley's many glass trinkets fell from the shelf above, smacking her squarely on top of her already sore head, causing her to scream with further pain. There was a sudden rap on the door.

"Hello?"

It was Mr. Weasley, and his voice was fraught with panic.

She was still clutching her throbbing head and was about to answer when he opened the door. She screeched: she was sitting against the wall wearing nothing but her knickers and a thin undershirt. Mr. Weasley let out a yelp of surprise and immediately withdrew from the bathroom.

"Hermione, I'm so sorry! I thought someone had broken into the house! You were making such a commotion and I didn't realize- What are you doing awake so early?"

She couldn't speak. She was mortified.

"Hermione?" he repeated.

"Yes," she answered at last, choking on her own words and beginning to feel slightly nauseous. "I'm fine Mr. Weasley."

"Well, Molly's awake and she is going to get an early start on breakfast. It should be ready in about half an hour."

"Thanks," she squeaked.

She listened for his footfall up the hallway and down the stairs until she was sure he was downstairs in the kitchen. She slammed her head back against the wall and yelled silently to herself, shaking her head and feeling completely humiliated. She looked down at the bits of glass at her feet, the remnants of a rooster figurine. The damage wasn't too bad. She decided she would fix it later: Mrs. Weasley didn't need to know.

Stepping out of the shower a few minutes later, Hermione quickly patted the excess water from her hair and went back into Ginny's room, looking both ways down the hallway for signs of anyone. It was probably close to six o'clock by now, but she was likely still the only one awake besides Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Once in Ginny's room she immediately shut the door and turned to look at her friend: still sound asleep on the bottom bunk, just getting into stride with a bad bit of snoring.

Reaching into her duffle bag for her wand, she dried her hair with a quick charm and hurriedly went downstairs for breakfast. To her surprise, Harry, Ron, Fred, George, and Bill were already sitting at the table. There was something about Ron lately that just made her heart skip just a bit faster each and every time she saw him, but she refused to be intimidated by her own gushy feelings. He was just a boy after all.

He looked over at her as she sat down right across the table from him. She distinctly saw a fleeting smile and she thought her heart would go absolutely mad inside her chest, but then he looked away. She tapped the empty glass in front of her coolly with her wand and watched it fill with water, keeping the corner of her eye on him the entire time. Once full, she casually picked it up and took a sip.

She glanced down at a section of the Daily Prophet which was lying on the table in front of her. The article read "Search of Malfoy Mansion Reveals Little." Ever since Draco had disappeared, the Ministry had been searching for him, believing him to be in league with Voldemort like his father. She was so caught up in reading the story, she barely heard the comment that came next.

"Hermione, what's that on your nose?"

The offending statement had come from her right, from Fred, who then proceeded to reach a finger over and attempt to touch her overgrown pimple.

The conversation at the table stopped and everyone turned to look in Hermione's direction. At that very moment, the pimple may not have been visible as her face began to turn a deep shade of red. She slapped Fred's hand out of the way and glared at him angrily.

"What i is /i that on your nose?" Ron asked, leaning forward and peering right at her face.

Thankfully, or mercifully, Mrs. Weasley entered the room with an enormous plate of bacon, sausages, and toast and instantly the nugget on Hermione's face had been forgotten. As she passed Hermione and prepared to set the tray on the table, she lost her footing and the plate, along with most of its contents, ended up in Hermione's lap. For a second or so there was silence until George began to snicker. In moments, the whole table was roaring with laughter.

She felt as if she were on the verge of tears. She had always taken pride in being able to laugh at herself in certain situations and perhaps any other day, she would chime in with her own giggles. But sitting there with a horrified Mrs. Weasley hovering over her shoulder and feeling butter and marmalade slide down her face and drip from her chin made her feel a bit differently on that occasion. It was that moment when the post arrived, and as Bill's handsome eagle owl soared over her head, he left a rather warm, unpleasant surprise on her shoulder, causing the group to go into hysterics.

She ran from the room as the tears began to fall. She heard the plate crash to the ground and shatter and the laughter start to falter but she didn't care. Racing up the stairs two at a time, she nearly plowed right into Ginny who was on her way down to breakfast. She slammed Ginny's bedroom door behind her and began to sob uncontrollably. She could hear footsteps and voices in the hallway outside and as she suspected there would be, there was a knock at the door.

"Hermione, what's wrong?" Harry called through the door.

What was wrong?! She had been having the worst, extraordinary bad luck imaginable. It was i so /i extraordinary in fact that she would have been surprised if she hadn't been cursed.

"Hermione, open the door," Ginny pleaded.

"I'm spotty, and covered in everyone's breakfast and bird droppings! You have no idea-"

She was cut off in mid-sentence by a knock at the door. She refused to budge. It felt so childish, bratty, and self-centered, but she couldn't drag herself to answer it.

"Hermione, there's a letter for you. It's from your mother," Mrs. Weasley shouted.

At those words she tore open the door to come face to face with her. Mrs. Weasley had an anxious look on her face and was about to apologize for earlier, only Hermione slowly took the small envelope from her extended hand. The others were standing around and looking at her curiously and she began to feel extremely annoyed. She really had made a spectacle of herself.

"I'm sorry," she stammered, her face feeling red and warm again.

"Let's go back down to breakfast," Mr. Weasley said. "I think it's a bit early in the morning for such excitement."

He winked in Hermione's direction, and though she knew he meant it in all encouragement, it only made her feel even more humiliated. What was worse, she could feel Ron watching her off to her left side. She stood up a bit more straightly and tried to gain her composure back as best as she could.

"Here," Mrs. Weasley said, raising her wand, "Scourgify!"

Cleanliness didn't make her feel entirely better, though it did help. She was anxious to read the letter from her mother. For the past few days she had felt as if she were in a daze, and not to mention riddled with feelings of guilt. She wasn't ever cross with her parents anymore. After all, that would require spending time with them, and between school, studying, and chasing Harry and Ron around to make sure they didn't get themselves killed each term was thoroughly tiring and time-consuming. She hadn't even seen her mum since the summer before, and though she had been more than welcome to go to France, she felt her time was better spent with Harry, trying her best to help him cope with the loss of Dumbledore.

Perhaps she had a separate motive as well. Spending the summer with Ron never made her feel, well, terrible. But she felt more than just all that. She was great friends with Ginny, the Weasley twins were always interesting, and being around magic for reason just made her sense that she was closer to home. Sometimes it seemed as though the world outside of magic was becoming more and more in peril at the hands of the magical. The older she got, it seemed, the more conflicted her life became. She didn't want to forget where she had come from, and the wonderful people who raised her, but knowing what she knew now sometimes it seemed like she ever fit back into a Muggle crowd.

At the bottom of the stairs, turning into the dining area to resume what would have been breakfast Ron put his hand on the small of her back and leaned over somewhat awkwardly to whisper something to her. More conflict: her heart began to pound, and she felt like giggling.

"Are you," he stuttered, "Are you ok?"

He took his hand from the small of her back and reached up to scratch the back of his neck nervously. The moment was gone, Ron was blushing, and Hermione regained her soberness.

"Yeah, I was just being a bit stupid," she answered stiffly.

She tore open the letter casually, trying to appear like she hadn't completely lost it. She flipped the piece of stationery over and gasped.


End file.
